"Sooner or later, we'll blame this on George W. Bush," George Will presciently predicted on Sunday's Week during the roundtable's look as how President Barack Obama is handling the gulf oil leak. Seconds later, the Huffington Post's Arianna Huffington didn't let Will down, declaring "the truth is, that right now we have precisely the regulatory system that the Bush-Cheney administration wanted. Full of loopholes, full of cronies and lobbyists filling the very agencies they're supposed to be overseeing the industry." Then this exchange: GEORGE WILL: So, it's Bush's fault? Just clear this up. ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: It is absolutely a thousand... continue reading
Longtime White House correspondent Helen Thomas was captured on video telling an interviewer that Israeli Jews should "get the hell out of Palestine" and "go home" to Germany and Poland. The May 27 exchange with Rabbi David Nesenoff was posted June 3 at www.RabbiLIVE.com and featured at the top of the Drudge Report on Friday and Saturday (complete with a picture of a smiling President Obama with his arm around Thomas at her 89th birthday last year.) After her comments became public, Thomas posted a statement at HelenThomas.org : "I deeply regret my comments I made last week regarding the... continue reading
I watch HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher so you don't have to. The most-noteworthy vitriol from Friday night's show that I tweeted last night - seven quotes, in sequence, you can read in less than a minute: ♦ Bill Maher opening monologue joke about Rush Limbaugh's wedding: "They say, instead of throwing rice, throw Vicodin." ♦ Maher, interviewing Paul Begala, channeling Obama's reaction to those who say he hasn't shown enough anger over the oil spill: "You retards...people who are not that bright... you have been used to people like Bush and Reagan who act like the President." ♦... continue reading
"Up next, why some Republicans are starting to wish the Tea Party was over ," Katie Couric teased Friday night as CBS feigned concern over how Tea Party candidates are too "extreme" to win. CBS News political analyst John Dickerson delivered the usual media warning, just with a new entity to blame for pushing Republicans too far to the right: "The passion that was so important in primaries for Tea Party candidates doesn't play often so well in a general election where you're trying to go after moderate and independent voters." Reporter Dean Reynolds cited Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle... continue reading
Linda Greenhouse's Thursday online column, " Justice Souter's Class ," began and ended with a shout of joy over a Harvard commencement speech delivered by recently retired Supreme Court Justice David Souter, appointed by George H.W. Bush to the Supreme Court, but who bitterly disappointed conservatives by often siding with the Supreme Court's liberal bloc. Greenhouse, just like liberal Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne on Wednesday, saw Souter's speech as a welcome attack on the "originalist" philosophy of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, though Dionne was more certain than Greenhouse about the points Souter was trying to make. (He claimed Souter... continue reading
On Friday's CBS Early Show, Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer argued that if the Gulf oil spill could be stopped, the scandal of the Obama administration offering jobs to Democratic senate candidates would suddenly disappear: "...all of this business about offering jobs to candidates if it they won't run , all of that, all of that stuff is going to go away if you can get this thing capped..." Schieffer didn't elaborate on his theory, but later complained about the sloppiness of the corrupt backroom deals: "I mean the first rule here is if you're going to do this... continue reading
Things must really be going bad for Barack Obama if the likes of longtime liberal journalists Mark Halperin and Jonathan Alter are comparing him to that glorious failure of a president - Jimmy Carter. Appearing on MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Reports on Friday to discuss the President's handling of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Halperin initially defended the President against his colleagues, claiming that he's gotten a "bum rap from the press" because he has gotten "most of the substance right " on the spill but because he has gotten "stagecraft" wrong Obama has "created this story line... continue reading
CNN's Larry King completely left out the major topic of the White House's continuing obfuscation on the Sestak and Romanoff controversies and barely mentioned the economy during his interview of President Obama on Thursday. While King did ask extensively on the Gulf oil leak and touched on the Middle East and immigration, he also tossed softballs on LeBron James and the President singing with Paul McCartney. The CNN host aired his interview with the chief executive during the first half of the 9 pm Eastern hour. King spent the entire first two segments asking about the oil leak issue. Other... continue reading
On Thursday's CBS Evening News, correspondent Jan Crawford filed a report recounting revelations that Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan has a history of taking solidly liberal positions on issues like abortion, gay rights, and gun control - with evidence in the form of memos, some going back to her days working for liberal Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Crawford: "Documents buried in Thurgood Marshall's papers in the Library of Congress show that, as a young lawyer, Kagan stood shoulder to shoulder with the liberal left, including on the most controversial issue Supreme Court nominees ever confront: abortion." The CBS correspondent... continue reading
After having already used her appearance on Wednesday's The View show on ABC to defend author Joe McGinniss's claim that Sarah Palin was acting like a Nazi trying to intimidate him, Joy Behar again defended McGinniss on the same day's Joy Behar Show on HLN, and suggested that Palin is responsible for making her children into targets for daring to let the public see her family - as most politicians do - while she was running for Vice President. Behar: "The other thing is that isn`t she the one who put her kids in the spotlight in the first place?... continue reading